Office Par-tay

So it’s now been almost a month since my last entry—oops. I’ve been working for 5 weeks and one day. Everything is going great, and I am enjoying myself. A few Fridays ago there was the big office party for the Innovation & Design department, which turned out to be a lot of fun. One of the directors of design research owns a house on the north shore (actually, pretty close to my place here in Port Jeff). All the locals leave off the "erson" on the end, so I am busy trying to fit in. Someone from work sent us a lot of photos from the event, so I have posted a few here. To make it a little bit easier, I tried to label some of the people that I interact with on a regular basis. Anyone not labeled in a photo is just a significant other or some other type of guest. Here I go through a brief explanation of each person:

Curt – head honcho, Director of Industrial Design

Shane – my boss, and recently promoted senior design manager

Donna – department secretary/office mother

Mike – junior designer, VT grad, and the main reason I got this job

Sean – junior designer, most recent hire (before the interns)

Sunmee – design researcher

Lexie – senior designer, has unofficially claimed the “intern project mentor” role

Ally – the other “kid” as we’re referred to (mostly by Lexie)

Eric – senior designer, really funny guy, knows a lot about a lot

Chad – senior designer, fellow resident of PJ

Mark – junior designer, another Port Jeff-er

Ian – senior design manager

Rich – design researcher

Chandra – design research manager (and the person that Ally reports to)

Last week, Sunmee took Ally and I into the city for a research field trip, mostly to observe corporations that currently use mobile point of sale. This research was mainly for Ally’s project (which focuses on MPOS in retail environments), but we met Lexie for lunch at a Thai restaurant which uses a digital device to take orders. All in all, it was a very long but fun day (it always is when I visit the city). This weekend Zac and Jansen came up to visit to celebrate the fourth (it’s always good to see familiar faces from home). We went into the city and toured the Museum of Modern Art and watched the fireworks near the Statue of Liberty. We also hit some golf balls and grilled out Saturday. The housing situation has become very interesting lately. The day before Jaime and Paula left for Ecuador, a friend of theirs from school was in dire need of a place to stay. Apparently a roommate left a stove on, a house was burned down, and Glenn and I are now joined by Jordi Casanova. He comes to America from Barcelona, Spain. This is his first visit to the country, and he had only been here for about a week when his house was destroyed. I feel bad for him, but he is very nice, and is making the best of his situation. I am told that when Jaime returns from Ecuador, he and Jordi will both continue to live in the room downstairs. I’m sure that I am leaving some things out, but if I think of anything else, I will update in the next blog!